1903 homesteaders give it a go in Montana

Apr. 26, 2014

The Marcotte/Hutton Homestead sits right on the banks of the Missouri northeast of Roy and is one of the most intact homesteads on the Missouri Breaks Historical Homesteads Auto Tour. / TRIBUNE PHOTO/AMIE THOMPSON

Written by

Tribune Staff Writer

Editor’s note: In 2014 Montana celebrates 150 years as a territory and 125 years as a state. We’re marking both landmark birthdays each Sunday with a Montana Moment, a chronological look at key events in Montana’s history.

The moment: Homesteaders begin pouring into Montana, 1903.

The story: Anna Caldwell Stiefvater was a Chicago girl who fell in love with a homesteader.

Employed in sweatshops, she never had so much as a backyard before she came to eastern Montana. She told author Gladys Kauffman that she guessed there were more people on one floor of the building she had worked in back east than she saw in the 21 years she lived on her Montana ranch.

Many Montanans owe their presence in the state to ancestors who homesteaded between 1903-1918. Many towns, too, date from homesteading booms.

The era combined good rains, railroad promotion and 32 million acres of free land — drawing 82,000 new Montanans. The “sodbusters” came from all walks of life, among them families, single men and women, new European immigrants, former slaves and others.

People who otherwise had little to no chance to own their own land came west to build a house, plant crops and stay on the land for five years to be granted title by having “proved up.”

During the Civil War, in 1862, Congress passed the Homesteading Act, enlarged in 1909 to grant 320 instead of 160 acres, with other modifications in the following years.

The 1902 Reclamation Act also had tremendous impact, funding irrigation projects across the West like the Huntley Project near Billings, the Sun River Project near Great Falls and the Milk River Project along the Hi-Line, according to “Montana: Stories of the Land” by Krys Holmes.

The people who homesteaded are largely gone, but they’ve left a rich legacy in the towns they founded, families they built and stories they left behind.

“Some of the funniest, saddest, hardest, most optimistic, most tragic and just plain good stories about Montana happened during the homestead era,” Holmes wrote.

Live the moment: The Missouri Breaks Historical Homesteads Auto Tour guides drivers through former homesteads along the Missouri Breaks north of Lewistown, with stories and photos of life in the era. Download the brochure at the BLM website or pick one up in the BLM’s Lewistown office at 920 N.E. Main St.

If you’d rather take a virtual homsteading tour, visit homesteadingmontana.org to read stories and see pictures from the era. County museums, too, are a great way to learn about homesteading history.